File 4.4 - The Game of Politics

Morning presented itself with another chilly day for the out-of-towners. Crowds filled the streets with people going to work and getting breakfast on the go. Everyone had a place to be and focused on it. Yet a polite warmth managed to carry through them. It had Rinn and Elle with a lot to take in as they watched.

Broken into two teams, each team had different assigned goals. Terra Team One Alpha’s mission was to locate the necessary supplies for the transport. Rinn detailed a list of parts needed. Alpha Team was led by Wells with Noinae and Schir. Bravo Team followed Rinn, accompanied by Elle, their task reconnaissance for their primary mission.

While Wells took the truck into the port district of the city, Rinn and Elle walked on foot through the city. Part of a good recon was feeling out the environment and people, so Rinn claimed. Their mission provided them with several different sorts of attire. Rinn selected the jumpsuits, making them generic enough to fit in as work crews or maintenance staff.

Eventually, they made it to a large park surrounded by the tall skyscrapers of the new part of the city. It gave them a good opportunity to sit and not look conspicuous. Rinn laid back in the grass, appearing very casual. “Come on, standing around is going to tire you out, Lellecausua.” He patted his hand on the grass directing her to the spot.

She looked down at him with a bothered expression mixing with worry. “We’re on a mission! You shouldn’t be lying about!”

“And you think I can’t investigate while lying down?” Reaching up for her, he grabbed her wrist and insisted on her sitting at least. He went back to relaxing once he got his way. “Look around, what do you see?”

“People. People without a care in the world,” she replied, not even thinking about the response.

Closing his eyes, Rinn grinned a little. “Really? I see something different. They’re struggling and fighting, they’re quite desperate. They want to live, probably harder than we do back home.” The hint of irony in his last words made him chuckle a little.

A little disturbed by his analysis, Elle turned to look down at him. “You sympathizing with them? You know what they did.”

“Yeah, I know.” Rinn dismissed her with a hand wave. “I’m just saying what I see, but you’re the one that brought it up. I was actually looking for a different answer. You saw it before right, the difference that they have here. There’s an old part of the city and a new part of the city.”

“So, that happens a lot.”

“But examine it closer. You can see there is a difference in the technology, where the age changes. They don’t maintain the old, but they don’t destroy it either to rebuild. They just leave it. As though it was a reminder to them. The new part of the city has a significant difference in construction and technology, as though decades passed. What does that tell you?”

“They like to waste space.”

“It means that the old city was that way for a while and kept that way. It is still functional, but a recent boom in development came through in the last couple of decades. I would guess a hundred years ago, this was a small town, but you look at it now it is a major hub. The port they went to is huge. There is traffic always going through.”

“So you’re saying something happened to turn this from a meaningless town into a metropolis in the last couple of decades?”

“Yes. That sort of development doesn’t happen naturally. There’s something very deliberate about it.”

“But how is that going to help us?”

“It means if it was deliberate then there was a lot of city planning done. So if there are any defenses it should be more uniform and less random. It makes our job of investigating easier.”

Elle stared at Rinn for a while in silence. Any retort she might have had for him disappeared after his last round. It was difficult to dispute such logic. She didn’t even look too closely at the city. They were looking for military defenses and level of technology, she never considered the city itself to be a clue. ‘Who is he? He’s not a normal soldier…’ She recalled how his fast-talking and impromptu acting got the Commander treatment. He was very good with words.

Breaking the silence, Rinn stretched his arms releasing a long yawn as though having just awoken for a nap. “How’d you get your nickname?”

“Huh?” It caught her a little off guard. He asked it as though it was nothing and the most natural question to follow in the conversation. Nothing in the way he spoke made it seem out of place, yet she knew it was random. It had no purpose in their previous discussion. She hardened her expression, planning to end his casual advance. “I don’t believe that has anything relevant to our investigation.”

Not even a flinch came from him. “Maybe, but we’re going to be stuck together in this foreign place for a while, living out of the hunk of junk that pretends to fly. I’m the outsider here along with your team newbie. Nothing wrong with me trying to learn about my comrades more, eh?”

Point proven again, he was good with words. She ended up feeling like the one in the wrong for having snapped back at him. Shifting her eyes away from him, though he still had his eyes closed, Elle worked out the turmoil in her mind. The fact that he was a stranger to the group made it difficult for her to trust him. He acted too friendly for someone assigned as their pilot.

Elle sighed, signaling her relenting to his inquiry. “The Commander, Polsen and myself have been together for a while. It was Polsen, he started calling me ‘Elle’ from the first day. He said my full name was a mouth full, so he shortened it on his own.”

“You didn’t protest?”

“I did, but he never listened.”

“Sounds like him. How far back do you guys go?”

“We were part of the Lyra 649th. Just regular enlisted soldiers.”

A pause in Rinn's response followed Elle’s answer. It wasn’t clear if he was thinking or just a difficult line to continue. However, his silence didn’t last for long. “Lyra huh, so you were a Fed during the war.” Another pause, though he made it clear he was thinking now. “The war ended four years ago and given his age. So you guys came in near the end.”

“Yes, we did not enter combat until the final year of the war. Most of the 649th was lost during the Battle of Cepheus-15. Only the three of us survived and only because of the Commander’s heroics.”

“Yeah, the stories of the Linebreaker and the White Ram are quite well known. It’s pretty crazy charging the Alliance’s Third Fleet to break the line their fleet formed and turn the tide of the entire battle.”

Memories of the fighting flashed back for Elle. She pocketed them away in the safe spot she always kept them. War memories only served to dredge up sadness. “He only did that to protect the battalion. He wasn’t thinking about breaking the fleet formation.”

“But it was the unorthodox methods that turned the battle. The war would have dragged on longer had things gone differently at Cepheus-15.”

“The war ended soon after Cepheus-15,” she recalled. Lines of empty coffins filled her mind of the lost comrades. An entire battalion wiped out, people she knew since she joined. “He was promoted and given a command shortly after the battle. Ollane and Noinae joined the team then. We flew independent missions in the final days of the war. After the unification, we were part of the peacekeeping forces until this mission. Schir had only recently joined us before the mission. She’s never even sortied in real combat.”

Pulling himself up, Rinn looked over at Elle. “You guys have quite the history.” Appearing as though well rested, Rinn began to lift himself up.

“What about you?” Elle stood up and walked around in front of him. Plenty of questions about Rinn still remained. She only had guesses about him and reason for his selection. “I told you about us, how about explaining yourself a little.”

The light-not-taking-anything-serious expression washed over his face as he stared at her. A difficult poker face to read. “So suspicious looking,” he sang, as though treating the whole thing like it was just a game. He started walking over to the path that cut through the park. A summoning finger beckoned Elle to follow him. It seemed he was willing to bite.

When she caught up to him, he tilted his head in her direction briefly. “You must have theories. I’m curious what you think.” It was still a game.

She hated the look he gave her, but knew he wasn’t going to start. It was up to her. Elle felt like he was trying to make her look like a fool by guessing first and then correct on what she got wrong. Almost as though he judged her based on her answers. “The way you said it, you weren’t on the Federation side during the war. So you’re likely an ex-Alliance officer. Since you’re still in the military after the unifications I’m guessing you had no problems with changes in the military under the Federation, as many Alliance soldiers left service after the surrender.”

“It’s true that many Alliance soldiers disagreed with the methods of the Federation and refused to serve.” Their walk brought them near the end of the park. Traffic on the sidewalk increased as the day slowly moved on. Rinn directed them down a street as though he knew where he wanted to go next, despite being an unknown city. “But after such a lengthy and aggressive campaign, it is only natural to have people discontent with the outcome.”

Elle glanced over at Rinn with a narrow look. “You didn’t say if I was right.”

“True, but if there was something I wanted to correct I would have said it.”

An evasive answer. She didn’t like how he treated it, but she continued anyway. “You spoke like Cepheus-15 was something you heard about rather than experienced. So you were probably not on the frontlines, since the Alliance threw much of their forces into the battle. The way you act is casual as though nothing surprises you. Perhaps you’ve seen too much of the war, rather than too little. A little cynical.” Checking him for any signs, he kept walking them down the sidewalk.

No reply or denial left her a little unsettled. She didn’t think she was so close. It felt like he was just playing her and leading her around. A terrible feeling settled inside her. “Your analysis and quick thinking at the clinic makes it clear you’ve got experience in this sort of thing. You’re used to lying to people, easily and quickly without a second thought. You read deeper into a scene than most would. Former military intelligence?”

A slow clap came from Rinn, as though granted her a reward for her efforts. “I figured you get to the answer with enough thinking.” She glared at him knowing he mocked her. “You’re correct. I was a former Alliance spy.”

“Why send an ex-spy from the former Alliance on this mission?” Silence from the ex-spy pushed her to come to her own answers, aloud. He kept nudging her, rather than reveal anything. “Your skill set as a spy makes sense for the investigation and analysis. But the mission was put together by the Federation Military and was an objective long before the unification happened. Including someone from the Alliance…” Her thoughts trailed off on her.

She worked the problem up to the point she stopped, but hit a wall. The Alliance part stumped her. It didn’t make any sense to her. A mission with the sole resources coming from the Federation, not the member states, didn’t have any support from the Alliance. Thoughts started back up for her as her train resumed. “No alliance members are part of the project. It was all made up of individuals from the Federation. Everything was being solely dedicated by the Federation President, it was his campaign goal, this project. The former Alliance member states had no say in any of it…” She stopped again, but for a different reason.

The annoying glow in Rinn's eyes showed up again, as though telling her to continue. He egged her on like he was the teacher guiding the student to the answer. It was too smug. “Politics…the member states forced someone from their side on the mission.”

Smugness turned to a grin. Rinn nodded lightly to her, while continuing their walk. “You’re correct, this is a political maneuver by them to have a hand in the project. If things go well, they’re on the winning side and have something tangible to use for support. If not, well I’m a spy, it’s easy to disavow any knowledge of my existence. I’m invisible until needed.”

“Don’t they know how important this project is?!” exclaimed Elle. Her voice caught the attention of passersbies. She quickly quieted her voice and tried to look invisible herself. Once out of range and in a different crowd of strangers, she resumed. “They’re playing politics with something so dangerous.”

Rinn shrugged at her. “It’s all a game for them. They do this sort of thing all the time. If things succeed they profit, if things fail they point fingers.”

“They’re so far away from the problem that they can’t even understand it. No one up there even knows yet. All of this, what we have here.”

“That is why we’re here.” In front of them was a large skyscraper. A new target for them as their investigation began a new turn. “No one’s been here in over six hundred years. It’s time to see how different they are from us.” Rinn walked through the threshold of the sliding doors with Elle following closely behind.